Preliminary RF rankings

1. Babe Ruth
2. Hank Aaron
3. Mel Ott
4. Frank Robinson
5. Roberto Clemente
6. Pete Rose
7. Shoeless Joe Jackson
8. Reggie Jackson - literally one spot behind Shoeless Joe in my all-positions rankings
9. Paul Waner
10. Harry Heilmann
11. Larry Walker
12. Sam Crawford
13. Tony Gwynn
14. Reggie Smith
15. Dwight Evans
16. Sammy Sosa
17. Bobby Bonds
18. Elmer Flick
19. Bobby Abreu
20. Gary Sheffield
21. Vladimir Guerrero
22. Dave Winfield
23. Willard Brown
24. Enos Slaughter
25. Willie Keeler
26. Pete Browning (I have as a CF?)
27. Sam Thompson

I think the list is missing Al Kaline. It looks like we had King Kelly here last time - I have him here to, but I think listing him as a catcher is justified.

Prelim:
1. Babe Ruth
2. Henry Aaron
3. Mel Ott
4. Frank Robinson
5. Al Kaline
6. Roberto Clemente
7. Pete Rose
8. Reggie Jackson
9. Larry Walker
10. Paul Waner
11. Joe Jackson
12. Enos Slaughter
13. Dwight Evans
14. Harry Heilmann
15. Gary Sheffield
16. Elmer Flick
17. Tony Gwynn
18. Sam Crawford
19. Reggie Smith
20. Vladimir Guerrero
21. Bobby Bonds
-- Kiki Cuyler
22. Willie Keeler
23. Sammy Sosa
-- Tommy Henrich
-- Brian Giles
24. Bobby Abreu
25. Dave Winfield
-- Harry Hooper
26. Willard Brown
27. Pete Browning
-- A bunch of guys
28. Sam Thompson

A few thoughts - Sam Thompson is one of the weakest HoM choices. Probably has a fair case as the single weakest choice. Not a fan of Brown or Browning either, but those are both guys who probably deserve more attention on my end.

I'm definitely lower on Crawford or Winfield than most people. They are reasonably similar to Manny Ramirez, who I am also low on. I'm going to guess my Enos Slaughter ranking is higher tham most voters - not sure why my system likes him so much, but it's something to look into.

Just to add to Jaack's notes:

I don't think there should be any way that Pete Browning is in the RF group. He was in CF last time, and according to BB-Ref, he only played 35 games in RF, as opposed to 477 in LF and 490 in CF.

And I would probably put King Kelly in with the RF group as well. He played 742 games in RF as opposed to 584 at C. And he played catcher more towards the end of his career, when the seasons were longer than at his debut, so he definitely has an even greater season fractions at RF than C compared to just games played.

Kcgard2, I don't see Al Kaline, accidentally omission, and if so, where would he place? And is Enos Slaughter at #24 with WWII credit

Jaack, I need to do a full work up and on mobile, but I have Sheffield ahead, maybe Slaughter is somewhere around #13. He deserves prime/peak WWII credit.

Agree with M Brinkley, Browning in CF and Kelly in RF makes sense.

Also, Willard Brown should be in CF as well. According to Seamheads, he only played 7 games in RF, but 310 in CF (138 in LF).

BB-Ref has it 107-253-23 games going from left field to right.

I mostly lurk and rarely comment, but I have to say that I don't see how Ott ranks above Frank Robinson. They are only 3.6 WAR apart on career, and Robinson played in a much more competitive environment. Even as a Giants fan, I would reverse the rankings I see above.

I mostly lurk and rarely comment, but I have to say that I don't see how Ott ranks above Frank Robinson. They are only 3.6 WAR apart on career, and Robinson played in a much more competitive environment. Even as a Giants fan, I would reverse the rankings I see above.

There's a pretty substantial gap for me bewteen Ott and Robinson. I think Ott accrued a bit more value than Robinson (I see the difference at more around 8-9 WAR) and his value is a bit more focused - basically all of that gap is in Ott's top 6 seasons. And while Ott did play in a segregated league, he also played under a shortened schedule - I do account for both, but it kind of ends up as a wash.

Robinson ended up with about 400 extra PAs, and I guess I don't see giving Ott another 400 as sufficient to overcome the segregation problem. But I admit that if you do that it's pretty much a wash.

I added Kaline and Kelly and removed Browning from the list. This matches how we had people assigned last time.

Willard Brown was also ranked with the CF in the previous ranking as well.

Will update. If Willard Brown is in CF that makes seven CF who are not PHoM, plus Cool Papa Bell who wouldn't be if I had to do it all over again. We've elected 31 center fielders.

I'm working on re-doing my rankings, but at cursory glance I would have 6 HoM CF that are not in my PHoM as well (WB wouldn't be one of them, however, but Cool Papa Bell would be), although I would have 3 PHoM, not HoM CF that would partially replace them.

Removing Willard Brown and Pete Browning, adding Al Kaline and King Kelly:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Hank Aaron
3. Mel Ott - Ott above Robinson because for the all-time rankings I'm not doing any timelining (a pennant is a pennant). Adjusting competition levels would alter my rankings considerably.
4. Frank Robinson
5. Roberto Clemente
6. Al Kaline
7. Pete Rose
8. Shoeless Joe Jackson
9. Reggie Jackson - literally one spot behind Shoeless Joe in my all-positions rankings
10. Paul Waner
11. Harry Heilmann
12. Larry Walker
13. Sam Crawford
14. Tony Gwynn
15. Reggie Smith
16. Dwight Evans
17. Sammy Sosa
18. Bobby Bonds
19. Elmer Flick
20. Bobby Abreu
21. Gary Sheffield
22. Vladimir Guerrero
23. Dave Winfield
24. Enos Slaughter - this placement includes war credit
25. King Kelly
26. Willie Keeler
27. Sam Thompson - the only RF who is not pHOM

8. Mefisto Posted: January 26, 2023 at 10:44 PM (#6114725)
I mostly lurk and rarely comment, but I have to say that I don't see how Ott ranks above Frank Robinson. They are only 3.6 WAR apart on career, and Robinson played in a much more competitive environment. Even as a Giants fan, I would reverse the rankings I see above.

A few things to help Ott:

Defense rated relatively better to Robinson in other metrics, sometimes significantly.
Worse home/road splits for F Rob
SIGNIFICANTLY worse relative clutch figures for Frank.

Prelim:
1. Babe Ruth

2. Henry Aaron

3. Mel Ott

4. Frank Robinson
5. Al Kaline - from previous post, Robinson comes down far enough and Kaline is strong enough by others that he almost nips Frank.

6. Reggie Jackson
7. Roberto Clemente

8. Larry Walker
9. Joe Jackson
10. Pete Rose

11. Paul Waner
12. Gary Sheffield
13. Dave Winfield
14. Sam Crawford
-Ichiro Suzuki-
15. Enos Slaughter
16. Dwight Evans

17. Harry Heilmann
- Mookie Betts -
18. Reggie Smith

19. King Kelly
20. Vladimir Guerrero
21. Elmer Flick
22. Tony Gwynn

In:
23. Bobby Abreu
24. Bobby Bonds

Borderline In:
-Brian Giles-
-Jack Clark-
25. Willie Keeler
-Bryce Harper-

Borderline Out:
-Harry Hooper-
-Kiki Cuyler-
-Tommy Henrich-
26. Sammy Sosa

Next Up:
Gavvy Cravath
Sam Rice

Quick estimate of group:
Darryl Strawberry
Rocky Colavito
Dave Parker
Giancarlo Stanton
Nelson Cruz
Tony Oliva
Jose Bautista
Jose Canseco
28. Sam Thompson

Preliminary Rankings
1. Babe Ruth. Clear #1, any way I look at it.
2. Henry Aaron. Equally clear #2.
3. Frank Robinson. In context, a little better than Mel Ott.
4. Mel Ott. Didn’t have a lot of competition for top power hitter in the National League in the 1930s.
5. Roberto Clemente. Best defensive right fielder in the HoM.
6. Al Kaline. Quietly great all-around.
7. Pete Rose. Sometimes I forget how good at baseball Pete Rose actually was.
8. Reggie Jackson. Top power hitter during a tough period for power hitters.
9. Larry Walker. Would be up with Clemente and Kaline with fewer injuries.
10. Joe Jackson. Would be up with Clemente and Kaline if his career had continued.
11. Sam Crawford. Tough pick between Crawford and Heilmann. I give Crawford the nod for excelling during the deadball era, where Heilmann needed the live-ball boost to excel: in context, Crawford stands out a bit more.
12. Harry Heilmann.
--Ichiro Suzuki (with Japan credit only roughly estimated)
13. Paul Waner.
14. Tony Gwynn.
15. Gary Sheffield. Offensively, a good comp for Reggie Jackson, but defensively, not so much. From Sheffield here to Winfield at 26, there's much distance between the players.
16. Bobby Abreu. Being very good at everything is great.
17. Enos Slaughter. Hard to place. This is with war credit. His contextual ranking is quite high, but his raw score is rather low. This is a compromise spot.
18. King Kelly. Contemporary reputation was higher than the reality, but he was still a great player in his prime. With a stronger finish, he’d be in the Heilmann/Waner/Gwynn tier.
19. Willie Keeler. Higher than I expected.
20. Reggie Smith. Smith and Evans are a tricky pair in my system. Very similar in raw value, and a lot overlap in their careers, but Evans goes into the 1980s and Smith into the 1970s. Evans ranks higher overall among 1980s players than Smith among 1970s players, but Smith ranks significantly higher among 1970s position players than Evans does among 1980s position players, so he gets the nod for now.
21. Dwight Evans.
22. Elmer Flick. One of the few hitters to be highly successful in the depths of the deadball era.
23. Sammy Sosa. Lots of arguments against him, but unless you fully buy into the clutch hitting stats, still a solid, lower-tier HoMer.
24. Bobby Bonds. A solid, lower-tier HoMer. Strong in many aspects of the game.
--Brian Giles
25. Vladimir Guerrero. Others seem to have him a bit higher. Not sure what the difference is. It may be that the differences lie more in the assessments of other players than in assessments of Guerrero.
26. Dave Winfield. I grew up seeing him as a superstar, but he wasn’t quite that. Still, he’s above my in-out line.
--Hurley McNair, Heavy Johnson, Jose Cruz, Harry Hooper, and Kiki Cuyler are around in here, probably.
27. Sam Thompson. Only elected rightfielder below my in-out line. He’s not a bad choice, in that I don’t think there are any better players from the 1890s that should have been elected instead of Thompson, but I think we went a little deeper into the 1890s than we should have.

1. Babe Ruth
2. Hank Aaron
3. Mel Ott
4. Frank Robinson
5. Al Kaline
6. Roberto Clemente
7. Reggie Jackson
8. Larry Walker
9. Paul Waner
10. Sam Crawford
11. Reggie Smith
12. Gary Sheffield
13. Dwight Evans
14. Shoeless Joe Jackson
15. Bobby Bonds
16. Vladimir Guerrero
17. Sammy Sosa
18. Bobby Abreu
19. Dave Winfield
20. Elmer Flick
21. Tony Gwynn
22. Enos Slaughter
23. Harry Heilmann
24. King Kelly

This is my PHoM cutoff line

25. Willie Keeler
26. Sam Thompson

My PHoM includes Heavy Johnson and Gavvy Cravath - they both fall between Gwynn and Slaughter.

25. Vladimir Guerrero. Others seem to have him a bit higher. Not sure what the difference is. It may be that the differences lie more in the assessments of other players than in assessments of Guerrero.

Vlad, Abreu, and Sosa are all extremely similar to me - offensive is about the same in quality, and all of them have a lot of room for interpretation on their defense. I rate Vlad the best, but mostly because I'm not hedging there at all. He has a better peak than Abreu and none of Sosa's weirdness with contextual stats - he's delightfully middle of the road for a bottom quartile HoMer to a point where I'm fairly confident he isn't a mistake in a way I'm not with Sosa or Abreu.

"Extremely similar" is definitely what I see here. The bottom half of the right field set flattens out more than the left fielders did. I had a very hard time settling on an order here, and my rankings may still shuffle quite a bit. I doubt I'm gping to change anything in left field, though, before I send my ballot.

cookie, you seem to be missing Pete Rose.

Prelim ballot

1) Ruth
2) Aaron
3) Ott
4) Frank Robinson - nothing controversial so far
5) Paul Waner
6) Al Kaline
7) Sam Crawford
8) Tony Gwynn - surprisingly good defender
9) Pete Rose
10) Reggie Jackson
11) Harry Heilmann
12) Larry Walker
13) Enos Slaughter - 2 seasons war credit
14) Gary Sheffield
15) Roberto Clemente - only 70 WAR and 33 WAPA puts him here. Big contrast with Sheffield on how they created value.
16) Willie Keeler - excellent defensive numbers
17) Elmer Flick
18) King Kelly
19) Joe Jackson - I delete any value he had after he cheated in the World Series applying the lifetime ban to the moment after the rule was broken
20) Reggie Smith
21) Dwight Evans
22) Dave Winfield
23) Sam Thompson - I have him at 31 WAPA, need to dig deeper on this one
-- Brian Giles
24) Bobby Abreu
-- Gavy Cravath
25) Sammy Sosa
26) Vlad Guerrero
27) Bobby Bonds - not PHoM but not too far below the line. He's right next to Kiki Cuyler and Chuck Klein on my list

DL from MN, could you explain a bit more about your placement of Clemente? You are assigning Clemente only 70 WAR, which seems a bit low considering that Baseball Reference has him at 94.8 and Fangraphs at 80. Given that you are also listing WAPA, I am wondering if that's Dan R WAR? If so, that's pretty seriously underrating Clemente, I think. From some basic measures of offensive and defensive value, it seems like Clemente should fit into the group that you have in the 5-8 range in your rankings, alongside the other 3000-hit, doubles-triples-power rightfielders:

Waner, 1926-45, 134 OPS+ in 10766 PA, 23 rField, 4 rBaser+rDP
Kaline, 1953-74: 134 OPS+ in 11597 PA, 154 rField, 27 rBaser+rDP
Clemente, 1955-72: 130 OPS+ in 10212 PA, 205 rField, 33 rBaser+rDP
Gwynn, 1982-2001: 132 OPS+ in 10232 PA, 6 rField, 29 rBaser+rDP

How is it that Clemente does not align with this group, but instead ranks with Gary Sheffield and Willie Keeler? Especially given that he and Kaline are exact contemporaries, and Kaline played in the weaker league, what factors would lead him to have much higher value than Clemente, given their similar offensive and defensive performance?

1. Babe Ruth
2. Hank Aaron
3. Mel Ott
4. Frank Robinson
5. Roberto Clemente
6. Al Kaline
7. Joe Jackson
8. Harry Heilmann
9. Larry Walker
10. Sam Crawford
11. Paul Waner
12. Tony Gwynn
13. Reggie Jackson
14. Pete Rose
15. Enos Slaughter
16. Gary Sheffield
17. Elmer Flick
18. Reggie Smith
19. Dwight Evans
20. King Kelly
21. Bobby Bonds
22. Willie Keeler
23. Bobby Abreu
24. Sammy Sosa
25. Vladimir Guerrero
26. Dave Winfield
27. Sam Thompson

@ Chris Cobb In #24, hopefully Kiko can join us soon, but his Win Loss Records are much lower on Clemente as well: https://baseball.tomthress.com/StatTables/PlayerStats.php?id=clemr101&w0=0.333333333333&w5=0&wl=0.333333333333&ws=0.333333333333&p0=0.333333333333&p1=0.333333333333&p2=0.333333333333

This placement helps me move Kaline and Reggie ahead, but I'm hard pressed to drop him below 7th.

His rankings help elevate Winfield into the mid-tier as well. He was an excellent road relative hitter that gives him a boost too.

Dan R on Clemente:

BWAA2 BRWAA2 FWAA2 Rep2 WARP2 WAPA2
-1.8 -0.1 0.3 -0.7 -1 -2.7
0.7 -0.1 -0.1 -0.7 1.2 -0.8
-1.8 -0.2 1 -0.6 -0.4 -2.1
0 0.2 1.8 -0.7 2.7 0.7
-0.2 0 0.3 -0.5 0.5 -1.1
2.1 -0.1 0.2 -0.6 2.9 0.6
4.3 0.1 0.5 -0.6 5.6 3.2
1.3 0 1.2 -0.6 3.1 1
3.1 0.4 -0.3 -0.7 3.8 1.6
4.6 0.1 0.8 -0.7 6.3 3.7
3.5 0.3 1.5 -0.7 6 3.6
4.6 0.1 1.4 -0.8 6.9 4.3
6.1 0.3 0.4 -0.7 7.5 5.1
3.7 0 1.8 -0.6 6.1 4
5.1 0.2 0 -0.7 5.9 3.8
3.6 0.1 0.4 -0.5 4.7 3
3.3 0 0.6 -0.6 4.4 2.5
2.1 0.5 0.9 -0.5 4 2.4
TOTALS (ignoring seasons 1-3)
47.2 2.2 11.5 -9.5 70.4 38.4

I noticed I should delete Clemente's first 3 seasons because he is well below average. His 5th season reduces his value in my system but I include it because season 4 has value enough to cover it.

Deleting seasons 1-3 moves him just ahead of Heilmann

cookie, you seem to be missing Pete Rose.

I had him as a LFer. In RF, he's between Jackson and Bonds.

@16: Thanks.

long time voter, but also long time no vote, chiming in with my surprise at consensus of Ott over Frank Robinson.

Yes, the stats per year slightly favor Ott. But timeline and integraiton are important, aren't they? And *surely* a discount is warranted for the war years when Ott was still racking up good numbers. Yes, we should also adjust a wee bit for season length.

Post-season stats don't move the needle much. MVP and HoF voting, both clearly in Frank's favor.

Best seasons? WAR has Ott ahead; Win Shares has Robinson with the top 2 figures.

The WAR numbers ding Robinson more for position adjustment. I don't know if that is justified.

All in all, I plainly disagree.

And *surely* a discount is warranted for the war years when Ott was still racking up good numbers.

I have trouble with how to deal with war years. I see some voters who don't want to give war credit and also want to give a discount to people who played. That will systematically undervalue a generation of players.

I've come to the conclusion that I don't have any good handle on quality of play so I wouldn't know how to systematically adjust for it beyond the standard deviations in run scoring.

Was Frank Robinson the better baseball player? Probably. Did Ott provide more value to the teams he played for at the time? Probably. I feel like I should be answering the second question for Hall of Merit voting.

Best seasons? WAR has Ott ahead; Win Shares has Robinson with the top 2 figures.

Some quick hitters for Ott vs Robinson.

Ott:
B-R: 110.8
B-G - 100.2
T-T - ~141
Clutch: -4
WPA: 80.5
Home/Road: 106/94
Playoffs: 901 OPS in 69 PA.

Robinson:
B-R: 107.2
B-G - 105.2
T-T - ~105
Clutch: -15.6
WPA: 73.0
Home/Road: 110/91
Playoffs: 887 OPS in 149 PA.

Was Frank Robinson the better baseball player? Probably. Did Ott provide more value to the teams he played for at the time? Probably. I feel like I should be answering the second question for Hall of Merit voting.

My sense would be that accurately answering the second question is necessary but not sufficient for answering the first question, which is the more fundamental one. We consider factors in addition to "how much value did a player provide to the teams he played for at the time" in a lot of different ways--giving credit for time missed due to military service or labor actions being two of the more obvious examples. The members of the electorate do not all share the same views of the most proper ways to consider factors that go beyond "how much value did a player provide to the teams he played for at the time?" but I'd guess we all do it in some fashion. Adjusting for the competitive context when comparing the values created in two different contexts is one of those ways, just as giving war credit is.

I am not trying in this post to argue that one should or shouldn't give war credit or make adjustments for competitive context, but I am trying to point out that whatever we are doing, we are generally not just answering the question of who provided more value to the teams he played on at the time.

I have trouble with how to deal with war years. I see some voters who don't want to give war credit and also want to give a discount to people who played. That will systematically undervalue a generation of players.

I agree that the approach described above is problematic, but I would have take just as much issue with giving war credit and not discounting the remaining players. One alternative artificially limits the total amount of value awarded, the other artificially inflates it.

The fact that Robinson has a bigger home/road split than Ott is highly counterintuitive, because Ott is often described as a player who benefited overwhelmingly from his home park due to having hit 323 of his 511 HR in the Polo Grounds. But he also hit for a higher average (.311-.297) on the road, and hit vastly more doubles and triples away from home (306-181, 51-21). It's an excellent example of how park effects are narratively oversimplified to be home runs only, ignoring (for instance) the large foul territory in the Polo Grounds.

After adding postseason data:

Rose moves up 1
Slaughter moves up 2
Dwight Evans moves ahead of Reggie Smith

I would have take just as much issue with giving war credit and not discounting the remaining players. One alternative artificially limits the total amount of value awarded, the other artificially inflates it.

Well, giving war credit and discounting players are operations of differing complexity. It's one thing to estimate what one player would likely have done if he hadn't been removed from play by military service, but to establish the amount of value reduction for the whole league based on the absence of all the players who were in military service is a much more difficult operation. (It's also psychologically more pleasant to restore value to players than to devalue what they actually accomplished.) It's also a much smaller degree of change for much more calculative effort.

So I am sympathetic to those who give war credit but who decide that calculating penalties isn't worth it.